I think even the idea of comparing the two this way lacks some kind of deeper understanding of both the FOSS philosophy and linux users as a heterogeneous, world wide group, including both amateurs and professionals. They are not in the same game, not for the same people. There are many of us, who need a stable, pure, low-level-configurable server distro and some of us even need the same kind of puritanism on our desktops. Many (probably more) need the out-of-the-box compatibility and GUI oriented eye-candy stuff.
I think the best is to have them both: have a low level distro, upon which an other one can be built, that satisfies the needs of the latter group. And this let's us (former guys) go with the pure stuff.
IMHO the appearance of Ubuntu, and the bipolar (usergroupwise) symbiosis of the two distributions is the greatest thing that happened in the Linux world in the last few years. And I really hope, that it helps the spreading of linux, while it's lets us live with our "old fashioned" ways. But please, don't blend the two!
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I think even the idea of comparing the two this way lacks some kind of deeper understanding of both the FOSS philosophy and linux users as a heterogeneous, world wide group, including both amateurs and professionals. They are not in the same game, not for the same people. There are many of us, who need a stable, pure, low-level-configurable server distro and some of us even need the same kind of puritanism on our desktops. Many (probably more) need the out-of-the-box compatibility and GUI oriented eye-candy stuff. I think the best is to have them both: have a low level distro, upon which an other one can be built, that satisfies the needs of the latter group. And this let's us (former guys) go with the pure stuff. IMHO the appearance of Ubuntu, and the bipolar (usergroupwise) symbiosis of the two distributions is the greatest thing that happened in the Linux world in the last few years. And I really hope, that it helps the spreading of linux, while it's lets us live with our "old fashioned" ways. But please, don't blend the two!